Our Game

Issa went forward. Magomed stood under a tree with his hand raised, commanding the rest of us to remain where we were. I glanced upward and saw three men posted above us on the hillside. Issa rapped a signal on the door, then a second. The door opened. Issa nodded to Magomed, who beckoned me to his side at the same moment that the gaunt man gave me an unloving push.

Magomed fell back, ushering me ahead of him. I entered the hut and saw at the far end of the room one man seated alone on a makeshift stage, his dark head sunk despairingly in his hands. A tattered backdrop portrayed heroic farmworkers with shovels, digging their way to victory. The door closed behind me, and at the sound he raised his head, as if woken from a sleep, and turned to stare at me. And I recognised by the light from the snowed-up windows the harrowed, bearded features of Konstantin Abramovich Checheyev, looking ten years older than his last clandestine photograph.

FIFTEEN

"YOU ARE CRANMER," he said. "Larry's friend. His other friend. Tim, his great British spymaster. His middle-class destiny." His voice was drugged with exhaustion. He passed a hand across his jaw, reminding me of the Murids. "Oh, Larry told me all about you. Just a few months back, in Bath. `CC, are you sitting comfortably? Well, take a big gulp of Scotch—I have a confession for you.' I was amazed he had anything left to confess. You know that feeling?"

"Too well."

"So he confessed. And I was shocked. I was a fool, of course. Why be shocked? Merely because I betrayed my country, why should I expect him to betray his? So I swallowed some more whisky and wasn't shocked anymore. It was good whisky. Glen Grant from Berry Brothers and Rudd. Very old. Then I laughed. I'm still laughing now."

But neither his ravaged face nor his flattened voice suggested it, for I never saw a man so degenerated by exhaustion and, as I read it, self-hate.

"Who's Bairstow?" he asked.

"An alias."

"Who provided his passport?"

"I stole it."

"Who from?"

"My former Office. For an operation some years ago. I kept it back for my retirement."

"Why?"

"As an insurance policy."

"Against what?"

"Misfortune. Where's Larry? When can I see him?"

The hand again, passed across the jaw, this time in a brusque gesture of disbelief.

"Are you seriously trying to tell me you are here on private business?"

"Yes."

"No one sent you? No one said, Bring us Pettifer's head, we will reward you? Bring us both their heads and we will reward you twice? You are seriously only one person here, looking for your friend and spy?"

"Yes."

"Larry would say bullshit. So I say it too. Bullshit. We are not much given to swearing in my country. We take insults too seriously for swearing to be safe. But bullshit all the same. Double bullshit."

He was sitting at a table with one foot forward, a solitary figure on the stage, staring away from me at the workers on the wall. A lighted candle stood on the table. Others burned at intervals along the floor. I saw a shadow move and realised we were not alone.

"How is the great and good Colonel Zorin?" he asked.

"He's well. He sends greetings. He asks that you make some public declaration that you stole the money for your cause."

"Maybe they both sent you. The British and the Russians. In the great new spirit of entente."

"No."

"Maybe the world's only superpower sent you. I like that. America the great policeman: Punish the thieves, quell the rebels, restore order, restore peace. There will be no war, but in the struggle for peace not a stone will remain standing. You remember that very funny joke from the Cold War?"

I didn't but said yes.

"The Russians are asking the West for peacekeeping money. Did you hear that joke also?"

"I believe I read something of the sort."

"It's true. A real-life joke. And the West is giving it. That's an even better joke. For the purposes of peacekeeping in the former Soviet Union. The West supplies the money, Moscow supplies the troops and the ethnic cleansing. The graveyards are full of peace, everybody's happy. How much are they paying you?"

"Who?"

"Whoever sent you."

"Nobody sent me. Therefore nothing."

"So you're freelance. A bounty hunter in the spirit of free enterprise. You are here to represent market forces. How much are we worth on the open market, Larry and Checheyev? Do you have a contract? Did your lawyer negotiate the deal?"

"Nobody's paying me, nobody sent me. I'm not taking orders from anyone, I'm not reporting to anyone. I came under my own power to find Larry. I'm not proposing to sell you. Even if I could. I'm a free agent."

He dragged a flask from his pocket and took a pull from it. It was dull and battered by use, but in design it was the same flask that Zorin had given me, with the same garish red insignia of his former service.

"I hate my name. My dirty, bloody name. If they had stamped it on me with a hot iron, I would not hate it more.”

“Why?"